A hearty reflection about God

By Tumusiime K. Deo

When I think of all the troubles in our world; war, hunger, anger, envy, jealousy, theft, adultery, murder, corruption, name it: Is it because we are short of churches? Short of prayers to stop them?

Or is it even because God has abandoned us or been overpowered by the devil? No. God is Almighty, a perfect and most powerful creator of Heaven and Earth.

God is without fault,and his aptness is reflected in all his creation. He created everything there is in abundance, adequate for present and future generations to come. God is not to blame for any of our troubles. We are.

My intention in this article, is to get us to feel the blunt presence of God, rather than looking for him through mere imaginations. When we go to church, we should not go to look for God in the church building but should take God to the church for the benefit of everyone else.

In fact, we must only go to church if we have God to take with us there, and not go to meet him there. God does NOT live in church.

No, he does NOT. That is why no matter how many prayers we say in church, our world remains as we see it today, with all blessings, and the challenges we distaste.

We claim that God sent his only son to die for our sins, yet the very sins Jesus died for remain with us to date, and still we don’t seem to get the point. So, why did Jesus die if the very cause for his death still remains? How do we claim that Jesus’s death was actually a victory, when the enemy he came against is still bouncing and raging on?

God, must be located through his wise and amazing creations, for in it all, is vested God's innate living presence. Anyone that searches for God this way, finds him, no matter what religion you belong to, tribe, or nationality, or social status.

The richest and most well-to-do people in the world are not necessarily the most prayerful. Why? It is because they figured out early enough that God does not reside in church, but is firmly premised in his creation. Chief of God’s creation, is humanity.

We are all inherently blood brothers and sisters because our Almighty Daddy is the same. I see our world as one massive family of God under the same roof, the sky above us.

The fact that you do not know someone, or haven’t met someone before, does not make one a stranger, but it is an opportunity when you meet them, to open up your heart and receive that brother, that sister that you never knew of.

And God always creates opportunities for us to meet our kin through innumerable aspects that commonly speak to us-we meet them in the markets, on the streets, at conferences, in the bus, on the train, in schools, in bars, these days online, and definitely in churches.

But for as long as you go to a church, and fail to realize and appreciate the fact that your immediate or far off neighbour is your brother or sister, you miss the presence of God. We can pray a million times, but if this is not mastered, then our prayers are in vain.

He created us different, not that each of us should be full of ourselves, but that each of us should need the other to be complete. Such is the abundance of our creator, wherein his inalienable presence is exorcised.

The list of places where to find God is endless, because God’s creations other than humanity, are innumerable.

The air we breathe, the mountains, water bodies and resources beneath them, the clouds and the rain that comes from them, the soil and its vegetation, the sun, moon and stars that give us natural light free of charge, the rocks, the animals, name it.

God created each one of these so delicately and to perfection, for us to be able to marvel and appreciate his presence through them.

They are what they are, across generations. They bring satisfaction to all across generations. We find them at birth and leave them at death.

One may wonder then whether God is visible in man-made creations. The difference between gifts of nature and gifts of man, is that in the former, God’s presence is clearly visible and manifests to all similarly.

A yellow flower for example brings happiness to everyone irrespective of one's political party, but a yellow shirt may carry divisive connotation, going by Ugandan politics.

The life in a natural flower is so immense that no one goes wrong with it. In the latter, God’s presence is not obvious, we must put him there.

When you build a church, God will not automatically be there, you must take him there. Same as when you make or buy a car or build a house or start a school or business, anything. How to do it, is to look back to God’s wisdom enshrined in the things he created all around us, his universality.

Think of a passion fruit. Inside it are a hundred seeds. But all 100, came from a single seed planted in the soil. Mother seed died, and out of it came more and more.

The number parented from the single seed multiplies to millions if you consider all other resulting individual fruits. The passion plant has tendrils. They anchor the vine. Blown by the wind to their next grip tender, but harden for extra strength as days go by.

Nobody ever says plants have brains like us, but they respond to stimuli by the immense power of God in them. What does all this tell us about the wisdom and nature of God? Multiplication, abundance, precision and resonance with nature.

I am not saying people must start worshiping God’s creation, but through it all we can visualise his presence, manifesting to us all no matter how tall or how short any of us might be.

God is in the church only as far as we take him there. And we don’t leave him there, but we go along with him so those who come in contact with us can experience his presence through our deeds.

A while back, a church building in Kampala was broken. People cried and wondered how anyone could bring down the house of God! But if God resides in the church, how could he not have stopped it from being broken?

Same as when Coronavirus came and churches were locked. How lonely that God must have been that his church was razed to the ground and his mighty power could not stop the enemies!

Everyone kept agitating for churches to be reopened, too hungry to return to church and meet God again!

Truth is that the people are fixated about a building structure that could be even be bought down by a storm or earthquake. God is too massive to be limited to a geographical confinement.

Our world could be, and shall indeed be a better place, once we wean ourselves and learn to visualise the true nature and presence of God.

We may have been cultured to think of God as the word, the word, the word spoken to Thessalonians, Romans, Galatians, Moses, Abraham, e.t.c, but if God spoke then, God definitely speaks to us today too-why not?

Clearly the sky is still the same today as it was back then: the rain falls today as it did back then; the sun shines today as it was back then; chicken lay eggs and hatch chicks as they did back then. God’s wisdom (wiring) and presence surpass generations.

Whatever we do out of the wisdom that God has given us, can only thrive in absolute measure if we dress it with the presence of God.

We are not short of exemplification but must each day work on our perfection even if God's ways may tend to always differ from ways of humans. But we are not just moving beings. We got God in each one of us and must allow him take precedence and lead our lives.

Once we master this, all our troubles shall be solved, and nobody will go to war, because whatever we are fighting for, was all taken care of at the time of creation.

Nobody will be sad ever again, because there’s every reason to be happy. Nobody will go hungry because the world is endowed with food aplenty.

Everyone must experience the true presence of God at most times of our life, otherwise we have no reason to live.

To what extent do you agree with the views shared in this article? Kindly share your perspective.

The author is a writer/ international communications consultant